London’s Burning: Who’s Who

As the first series of London’s Burning, here are some of the Blue Watch regulars who’ll be raising temperatures in the station.

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Leslie Appleby

Leslie Appleby is universally known as “Charisma”, because he has none. Those Blue Watch boys and girls have a keen sense of irony, it seems. A bit of a Walter Mitty character, Charisma likes to talk about friends who don’t seem to exist, and boast about his sporting skills. Which also don’t seem to exist. Will poor old Charisma ever clamber out of his sad, lonely hole and enjoy a proper social life? Well, let’s not write him off just yet.
Josie Ingham

The first woman in Blue Watch, Josie has to overcome all kinds of casual sexism on the job. In fact, she’s given the cold shoulder by all the blokes when she first enters their domain, because clearly they haven’t heard it isn’t the 1950s anymore. Josie deals with all of it, including the crude nicknames, because firefighting is in her blood – her brother and siblings were all firefighters, and she’s ready to do them proud.
Bert Quigley

Never mind his actual name, because everyone knows Bert Quigley simply as “Sicknote”. The nickname is richly deserved, because the man is always banging on about his various ailments, whether it’s a gnawing ulcer or a throbbing headache. Still, he isn’t JUST a hypochondriac. He is, after all, the “Penge Pavarotti” (Penge being a suburb of London, just so you know), and loves to show off his operatic schools as part of a local am-dram group. He certainly loves it more than his audience, anyway.
George Green

George Green is a big bruiser – quite literally. A former boxer, he’s still handy with his fists, and may just let himself get coerced into boxing again. He’s also a dab hand at moonlighting, working as a chauffeur in between putting out fires. This can get him into trouble – like the time he’s mistakenly arrested for kerb-crawling – but George never seems to learn from his mistakes. That said, he can be quite clever when it comes to courtship, even pretending he has singing and poetry skills to woo a particular lady.
Ronald Cartwright

Known as “Vaseline” because of his slippery nature, Roland is the cocky, swaggering womaniser of Blue Watch. Not content with having more mistresses than you can shake a fire hose at, Vaseline has also been married three times – to three women called Marion. The rivalry between the Marions causes no end of grief (“Marion 3 thinks I’m giving Marion 1 one”), but that’s what you get when you have a personal life as messy as this chap’s.
Malcolm Cross

A far cry from some of the more rough and ready Blue Watch blokes, Malcolm is a well-spoken intellectual sort. The kind of man who can reel off passages of poetry, and have a good old chin-wag about Tennessee Williams plays. He also has a surprisingly good command of Punjabi, having been raised in India. Malcolm actually became a firefighter partly to rebel against his posh family, and is a bit of a practical joker to boot.
Kevin Medhurst

Poor old Kevin Medhurst. Yes, he can put his foot in it sometimes, and his penchant for talking back to superiors really doesn’t endear him to the top brass at the station. But he does come from a very turbulent background, with a convict father, a tearaway brother and a sister who’s in a terrible relationship with a bullying scumbag. But can Kevin rise above his circumstances and be a better person?

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Leslie Appleby

Josie Ingham

Bert Quigley

George Green

Ronald Cartwright

Malcolm Cross

Kevin Medhurst